


roaring like the ocean

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [14]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, Episode: s04e22 Elegy, Episode: s04e23 Demons, Episode: s04e24 Gethsemane, Episode: s05e01 Redux I, F/M, angst angst angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-07 20:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Scully deals with her worsening cancer as tensions run high between her and Mulder.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> warning for major angst/mention of suicide/slight suicidal thoughts.

Scully has dreams of the college girl's smooth throat being severed, her pleading eyes in the mirror. She fights off a nurse in the bathroom and wipes the blood off of her hands with scratchy paper towels while Mulder hovers nervously. He tells her, later, that Harold is dead and attributes his visions, his death to the lack of his medication. “Well, Harold Spuller wasn't dying, Mulder,” she says. “He-he was killed as a result of what that woman took away from him.”

“Is that your medical opinion?” he asks, and something in his tone hits her the wrong way, stiffens her spine. It has been a long few days.

They stop on the ramp and she turns to face him. Her hands are slick with cold sweat over the patches of dried blood. “I saw something, Mulder,” she says.

“What?”

“The fourth victim. I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” he says, and the annoyance in his tone surprises her. Suddenly she is twenty-nine again, telling him that she followed the words of a psychic and he is mad at her for endangering herself. But at least that had made sense. At least he'd had a reason.

“Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe it.”

“Is that why you came down here, to prove that it wasn't true?” he asks, tension in his tone.

At the time, over four years ago, she'd been disappointed that he hadn't been proud of her for pursuing a supernatural lead, but now it just annoys her. Her life does not revolve around pleasing Fox Mulder. Except maybe it does, because she is here instead of doing other things, things that maybe she should be doing with her remaining time. “No, I came down here because you asked me to,” she says wearily.

“Why can't you be honest with me?” he asks, and she stiffens even more.

There are things she wants to say, harsh things, but she settles for snapping: “What do you want me to say? That you're right, that-that I believe it even if I don't? I mean, is that what you want?”

“Is that what you think I want to hear?”

She hadn't thought so. “No,” she says softly.

“You can believe what you want to believe, Scully, but you can't hide the truth from me because if you do, then you're working against me... and yourself,” he says.

There's more, she thinks, but she doesn't hear it. There's a roaring in her ears like the ocean, a kind of fury and incredible sadness combined inside her. He says something about being afraid of the same thing she is, and she swallows hard. She cannot do this, not now. How dare he. “The doctor said I was fine,” she says.

“I hope that's the truth,” Mulder says, and her stomach clenches.

Her eyes sting, her nose burning. She whispers, “I'm going home.”

Mulder doesn't follow her to her car and she's glad. She's going to cry and she hates crying and she hates crying in front of people. She climbs into the front seat of the car and clutches the wheel but she can't bring herself to start the car. She trembles, dissolving into brief, soft sobs. She can't put into words what she's crying over. The college girl in the mirror, maybe. Her doctor's appointment, the fact that she is inching closer and closer to inevitable death. She doesn't want to die. The fact that her best friend accused her of lying to him, of working against him. She sniffles.

Ahead of her, the ambulance carrying Nurse Innes springs to life, wailing as it pulls out onto the street. Her eyes follow it until they land on the rear view mirror. Harold Spuller stares back at her from the back seat.

Jolting in place, eyes widening, she turns around quickly. The back seat is empty. _God,_ she thinks, trembling. _I don't believe in ghosts. I don't._ But she is dying, and she has seen the recently deceased. Just like Harold, just like Angie Pintero. She is dying.

Somehow she manages to drive home. She doesn't remember the trip; she just remembers staggering out of the car, unlocking her door and crawling into bed. She doesn't dream. She wakes up to blood sliding out of her nose, pain reverberating through her skull, and calls in sick. It's Friday. She can have the weekend to regain her dignity.

Mulder notices. Of course Mulder notices. He calls her near the end of the day, when she's wrapped up in blankets on her couch with a book her mother recommended. She answers without looking, and the all-too familiar, “Hey, Scully, it's me,” makes her stiffen from head to toe. “Are you okay? You were out of work today.”

“I'm fine, Mulder,” she mutters, setting the book face-down on her lap.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and his ton is exactly the same as last night. She closes her eyes, resting her head against the side of the couch, and resists the urge to snap at him. “You don't seem fine. Last night, this morning…”

She sighs heavily. “I don't want to talk about this right now, Mulder. I'll see you Monday.” Her thumb goes towards the button to hang up.

“Scully, wait,” he says, and his voice is urgent enough that she doesn't hang up. Silence for a minute before he says, “Look, I… I know I screwed up. I'm sorry. I just… There's a lead I'm following this weekend, and I wondered if you'd want to…”

“I'm not particularly interested,” she snaps, more viciously than originally intended. “And I'm not sure why you would want my help. Not if you can't trust me. Not if I'm working against you.”

Silence again. She can hear his breathing, can hear the hurt in his inhales and exhales. “I'll see you later, Scully,” says Mulder finally, quietly. Defeated. He hangs up before she can decide whether or not she wants to say anything.

She puts the phone down on the coffee table. Wipes her eyes and opens her book.

\---

She should've expected the phone call summoning her to Rhode Island at five a.m. Sunday morning. Things are never simple with Mulder, and she can't just go the weekend without seeing him and go into work on Monday. The sound of his voice--disoriented, feverish--is enough to sway her, but her mind is made up when he says, “I've got blood all over me.” His blood or not, something bad has happened and she is the only one who will come.

She forgets the fight on the way up there, forgets almost everything of the previous weekend. She finds him in the shower in the hotel room, wraps him in a blanket and checks him for injuries. He doesn't remember anything after their conversation Friday. His gun has been fired.

They track Mulder's movements to Amy and David Cassandra, to the Mulders’ old summer house. Mulder has something like a seizure outside and they find two bodies inside. Mulder is arrested for murder. It happens too fast for her to stop any of it.

“I'm going to get you out of here,” she tells him, and she means it. She finds ketamine in Amy Cassandra and in Mulder. She works all night, autopsying, gathering intel on the Cassandras and a dead police officer. Her phone rings sometime around eleven; it's her mother, wanting to know where she is. She can feel the disapproval leaking through when she explains. Maybe she should feel the same way her mother does, maybe she should be upset at another weekend lost to some crazed goose chase. “I have to, Mom,” she says instead, stubbornly white-knuckling the phone. “Mulder needs me. No one else is going to help him.”

Her mother sighs on the other end of the phone and she pretends she doesn't hear it. “Just don't overexert yourself, Dana,” she says quietly. “And come home soon. I miss you.”

Scully clutches the phone so hard it hurts. “I will, Mom,” she whispers. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” her mother says sadly. “Goodbye, sweetie.” She hangs up and tears spring to Scully's eyes; she wipes them away firmly. After this is over, she'll spend as much time as possible with her mother. She puts down the phone and picks up the scalpel.

Finally she finds what she hopes she knew all along: proof of Mulder's innocence. A murder-suicide. By the next morning, Mulder's reached the same conclusion and is determined to track down the truth with no signs of stopping.

She's seen this look of absolute determination, of closing everything else out on his face before; a few months ago, she saw it in Allentown as he hunted down answers to why she was sick. He had wanted to keep going with the investigation, had brought it up for weeks ago, had a running file and everything, but eventually she shot him down. (The answers may be out there but they are unattainable, just as they always have been. And she knows better than to believe that there's a cure for brain cancer. She was too exhausted to look any further.) Maybe the reason he's plunging into these wild causes is because he needs a pursuit, and if it can't be her illness it might as well be the usual. Maybe it's a distraction. Or maybe it's just the way he is and she can't expect any different. He barely speaks to her on the ride to Warwick, and she can't tell if it's the fact that he's sick or because of everything that's happened between them as of late. She's not sure he's entirely forgiven her for what happened with van Blundht.

She starts to understand at Goldstein’s office: Mulder walked away from their conversation on Friday (from the things she said) and did something insane. She doesn't _understand_ , she doesn't fucking understand. “Why would you do that, Mulder?” she demands as they leave the office. “Why would you undergo something as crazy and dangerous as this?” He doesn't answer. As soon as they step out into the sunshine, Mulder groans sharply, his hands to his head. “Mulder?” He crumples, nearly bent in half. “Mulder!” She's at his side in a second, touching his arm. “Mulder?” He's groaning and convulsing, hot and quivering under her hand. He finally stills, on his knees on the pavement next to her, and she strokes his forehead, prodding gently, “Mulder?”

“I'm fine,” he says, getting to his feet, and irritation courses through her. She's starting to understand why Mulder gets so mad when she says she's fine. He is _not_ fine. Not at all.

“No, I am not going to take that for an answer,” she says fiercely as he walks away, right on his heels. “You do not belong at work. You need to be somewhere where you can be monitored.” No response. She tries, “You are a danger to yourself and a danger to me.” She thought if anything would get through to him it would be a threat to her, but he shows no sign of having heard her. “Are you hearing me?”

“Give me the car keys,” he says stubbornly.

“No, you're not driving. You're not doing anything until these symptoms go away.” She should have fucking come with him on Friday. Anything is better than this, this fucking mess.

Mulder turns to face her, says, “Scully, I don't want these symptoms to go away. Whatever's happening to me, whatever treatment I've received, is allowing me to go back into my unconscious. The truth is in there, recorded, and I've gotten access to it. What happened to my sister--the reason she was taken--is becoming clear to me, and I need to know that.” She exhales; there's nothing she can say to him that would change his mind. She knows him. “Now give me the keys,” he adds firmly.

She inhales, exhales again. “To go where?”

“To my mother's, in Greenwich.”

She should say no. She should demand that he go to a hospital, tell him they'll pursue this later. She should demand that he stop putting himself in danger, goddamnit, because she'd do anything to have a few more years, to live to see Christmas. But all she can hear is his voice saying, _You're working against me._ He'll go either way, whether she gives him her approval or not. The least she can do is make sure he's safe.

“Okay,” she says, wearily. “But I'm driving.”

\---

It's a fucking cycle, she should've seen this coming. The Mulders disappear into a side room, and a few minutes later, Teena Mulder comes bursting out of the room where she and Mulder were talking, not giving Scully a second look before storming up the stairs. Thinking maybe she can comfort Mulder, Scully draws closer to the room, nudging the curtained doors open gingerly, and immediately sees that it's empty. She hears the clunk of a closing car door and comes to the window just in time to see their car speeding away from the house. “Fucking bastard,” she hisses through her teeth. “Goddamn fucking bastard.” She knows exactly where he's going, what he's doing.

Anyone else might say that she should leave him to himself, that he clearly doesn't care for his health or wellbeing. She can't. The tug in her stomach is too strong. She has no idea what he'll do, who he'll hurt--be it someone else or himself. She calls a taxi to a rental car place--her car is still back in Providence--and waits at Teena’s door anxiously, hands clenched around her elbows.

“Are you going to find him?”

She turns to see Teena Mulder standing on the stairs, looking distressed. “I hope so, Mrs. Mulder,” she says quickly. “I'm sorry for… I've called a cab, it should be here any minute.”

Teena nods. Her eyes travel over Scully’s face before she says, “You're bleeding, Miss Scully.”

She feels the trickle of blood too late. “Damn,” she mumbles, hand traveling fast to her nose. “Do you have, um… may I use your washroom?”

Mulder's mother shows her to the bathroom and stays in the doorway as Scully cleans up. She studiously avoids eye contact, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the minute. “Whatever Fox did to himself,” says Teena suddenly, “did you do the same thing? He was bleeding, too.”

A combination of irritation and worry comes up to the surface. Of course Mulder's mother wouldn't know. “I'm ill,” she says behind crumpled Kleenex. “Not the way Mu--not the way Fox is.”

Teena nods. “I slapped him,” she murmurs. “I am sorry for that, no matter how mad he made me. Will you tell him that?”

_She slapped him?_ Scully stares at herself in the mirror, too pale, a wad of red-stained Kleenex held to her nose. She swallows hard before turning to Teena. “Yes, I will.”

The other woman nods, face unchanged, before turning and heading back down the hall. Scully can hear her footsteps on the stairs. When she exits the bathroom and goes back into the corridor, she can see the taxi waiting on the curb.

\---

The police are already at Goldstein’s when she arrives. The police car is pulling away as the detective who headed Mulder's investigation looks on. She runs to him, demanding, “Where's Mulder?”

“He's not here,” the man says.

“Did you ask Dr. Goldstein?”

“Goldstein wouldn't say one way or the other.”

She focuses in on the police car and determination suddenly courses through her like a drug. “Hey, stop the car!” she shouts, running after them. She catches up to the car as it stops, as other officers crowd the car with her. “Open the back door,” she tells one of the officers. As soon as it's open she leans in, demanding, “What did you do to him?”

Goldstein turns his face away, closing his eyes as she continues harshly, “Look, I know he came back here. This is the only place he would have gone. Did you treat him?” Nothing. She seizes a handful of his shirt and yanks him up go meet her. “Damn it! Answer me!”

“Yes,” he says quickly, fearfully.

“Where is he now?”

“I don't know where he went,” Goldstein scrambles, shaking his head wildly as he looks worriedly up at her.

She shoves him back on the seat with disgust, watches as he gasps for breath, for composure. “What was the last thing he said to you?” she snaps.

“He said he was going to exorcise his demons.”

She knows where he's going to go. She turns away from the car, shoes clicking on the pavement. “Agent Scully.” The lead officer, Curtis something, is following her. “Where are you going?”

“I'm going to find Mulder.” She rummages in her coat pocket for her keys. “He needs medical attention.”

“That man is armed and dangerous,” Curtis snaps. “His actions are unpredictable. You're putting yourself and others in danger by refusing to reveal his location.”

“Mulder would never hurt me,” Scully says stubbornly. “ _He's_ hurt and he needs help. I can calm him down, convince him to go to a hospital. He doesn't need the calvary swooping in, it'll agitate him.”

“If you're certain he wouldn't hurt you,” says Curtis, in a way that suggests he doesn't believe her, “fine. But we don't know that he won't hurt others. We need to be prepared for the possibility that he will. We can't sacrifice innocent lives for one man.”

Scully bites her lower lip. She'd like to say she can take care of this entirely on her own, but she isn't sure. “Quonochontaug,” she tells him, feeling like a traitor. “His childhood vacation home. He'll go back there.” Curtis nods, satisfied, and she takes a step towards him, eyes hard. “I'm coming with you. I'm taking care of this. No arguments.”

Curtis nods absently, turns away from her, pulling out his radio. “It's an hour away, we’ll never make it. I'm going to send the local police on ahead of us.”

“Tell them not to go in!” Scully says quickly. “Tell them to wait outside. I don't even know if Mulder's there yet, I don't know how much of a head start he had. But they can't arrest him. They can't let him know they're there. Tell them to wait for me and I'll talk him down.”

Curtis studies her for a moment before sighing and saying, “You do seem to be the only person who can get through to him.” He turns and heads toward his car, calling, “Ride with me, we'll get there faster,” as he goes.

She can't relax the entire way up there, even with the added benefit of the siren for speed. Her fingers drum restlessly on her knee and she watches out the window, looks at the blur of headlights ahead. She can't stop picturing Mulder hurt, Mulder dead, Mulder gone before her. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She thinks back to when Mulder had held her in the hospital and kissed her forehead, when he'd smiled goofily at her over a pink birthday cake and given her a key chain. Maybe it's selfish of her to want him to be that Mulder all the time, but she needs him. Needs his support. But god, crazy drilled-a-hole-in-his-head Mulder is still Mulder and she can't lose him.

She instructs the waiting police not to shoot before entering the house alone. She opens the door quietly, cautiously, and goes for her gun before she changes her mind, mentally berating herself. _It's Mulder and he would never hurt me,_ she tries. But the statement feels void as she moves through the dark house like a character in a horror film. Two people died here while Mulder watched. A murder-suicide, and Mulder did the same thing to himself that Amy Cassandra did before her death. She hopes history doesn't repeat itself here, tonight. “Mulder?” she calls.

“Leave me alone, Scully,” he calls back harshly from somewhere upstairs. He sounds angry, on edge, unpredictable, but he is still alive and that's all she needed to know. She follows the voice.

She finds the room, finds him sitting in it, head tipped back and eyes closed, rocking slightly. “Mulder, it's me,” she says quietly.

“Scully, leave me alone.” He doesn't stop his motion, trembling in place, and he makes a sudden sound somewhere between a choke and a gasp. She sees the gun in his hand as she draws closer, as he shakes and rocks. He is falling apart right in front of her. “It's… all falling into place,” he says.

“Mulder, put down the gun,” she says calmly.

“No. Don't try to stop me.”

She thinks of Amy Cassandra and murder-suicides, and no, damnit, they are both walking out of this house alive tonight. “Please, Mulder…” she pleads.

He trembles and trembles. His hand suddenly shoots out to the gun, clenching around it, and he turns furiously and points it at her as if she is a criminal, shouting, “Get away!”

Modell in a hospital room and he's fighting against it, shaking with the force of not shooting her, telling her to get away but in a different context. Icy Cape and he wants to trust her and he's only doing it because she pointed the gun at him first. “Are you going to shoot me, Mulder?” she asks, evenly, and she never, _never_ expected him to nod so determinedly like this. _He's sick,_ she reminds herself, _he doesn't know what he's doing,_ but that doesn't stop it from feeling like something inside her has shattered. _Mulder, it’s me,_ she wants to say. _It’s_ me. “Is that how much this means to you?” she continues. She is picking her way through the shards. She hears herself say, _Mulder would never hurt me._ “Mulder, listen to me. You have been given a powerful hallucinogen. You don't know that these memories are yours.” He doesn't lower the gun. Her eyes are burning and, oh god, she is going to cry. She cannot cry here. “This is not the way to the truth, Mulder,” she says softly, forcing her voice to remain steady. She's shaking her head a little, partially out of disbelief. Murder-suicide, murder-suicide. He may not shoot himself now, but if he shoots her she knows he will eventually follow. It's her biggest fear in her impending death, what will happen to him. “You've got to trust me,” she tries. The same thing she said to him all those years ago in a rainy hotel room; maybe it'll get to him.

“Just shut up!” he roars.

“Put down the gun,” she says. He doesn't move. He's looking at her and not really seeing her. For a second, she wishes he would pull the trigger. Her head hurts and she is dying and she wants it to end. Make it stop, Mulder, just do it. Would he end her pain by shooting her if he asked? Maybe she won't have to.

“Let it go,” she says. His fingers tighten around the gun. She closes her eyes and readies herself for the gunshot.

The loud sound is startling but she feels no pain. Her eyes fly open, terrified she'll see Mulder dead on the ground, but the shots continue and Mulder is standing, facing away from her. He is emptying his clip into the wall. She watches. She is going to cry. She swallows hard and thinks of her mother. Whatever happens to lead to her death, she needs a chance to say goodbye.

When he's finished, he crumples in on himself. She approaches him slowly, touching his arm. He doesn't move. She gives in to it for once, her unexplainable need for him, and wraps herself around him, resting her cheek on his back. He is warm and she wants to sob. “It's okay, Mulder,” she whispers. “It's over. It's okay.”

Feet pound the steps angrily. It's the calvary. She pries the gun out of Mulder's hand and throws it across the room before leaning back over him like a shield. The police burst in, guns drawn, scanning the room. “Don't hurt him!” she calls to them, tightening her awkward hold on him. “He's sick. He needs help. Call an ambulance.”

A few of the men lower their guns, but most do not. The leader stares at her incredulously. “Call a goddamn ambulance!” she snaps.

Someone pulls out their phone and starts dialing. The bundle of officers disperse, rattling around the room looking for evidence. “You're not going to arrest him,” she snaps at a few who draw closer, and they leave them alone after that.

Mulder is still unresponsive, stiff as a board under her embrace. He's hot and feverish. She sniffles and smooths his hair, rests her head on the strong surface of his back until the paramedics come.

She won't let them touch him; she coaxes him onto the stretcher herself. “We just want to help him, miss,” says one.

“I'm riding with him,” she tells them firmly and they don't argue. She lets them carry the stretcher, following right on their tail.

Ambulances always remind her of Leonard Betts now. She answers the paramedic’s questions as she takes a seat beside Mulder, gripping his hand in hers. “He doesn't know what he's doing,” she says again and again. “He's sick.”

“Are you okay, miss?” the paramedic in the back with them asks kindly. “You're bleeding.”

She clasps her free hand to her nose and feels the trickle of blood. She suddenly feels the exhaustion in every part of her body, in her bones. “I have brain cancer,” she mumbles. “This is normal. It's nothing.”

“I think maybe you should let someone check you out at the hospital, miss,” says the paramedic. “Along with your friend.”

Scully nods, barely knowing what she is saying.

Mulder's fingers tighten around hers. “Scully?” She looks down at him; he looks terribly confused, but responsive. He's actually responsive. His free hand comes up to touch her face. “You're bleeding. I didn't… I didn't shoot you, did I?” he says unsteadily.

She drops his hand. “No, Mulder,” she whispers. Tears are springing up to her eyes, finally. Murder-suicide, but they are still alive. They are still alive but she won't be. Not for much longer. “You didn't shoot me.”

The paramedic doesn't comment when she dissolves into sobs behind her hand.

\---

The oncology department at the hospital recommends that she see her personal oncologist when she gets home. “And take it easy,” they recommend. Somehow, she doesn't foresee that happening. They tell her she can see Mulder, that they have him on sedatives while the ketamine leaves his system, but she doesn’t. She gets a hotel room and sleeps until the next evening.

Scully doesn't think of the backlash from the Bureau until Skinner calls, demanding answers. She explains warily, cross-legged on the bed and rubbing her temples. She leaves out the part where she really thought Mulder was going to shoot her. Skinner doesn't seem very satisfied with her explanation, but then again, it's the truth. “I'm sure Agent Mulder can explain it to you more fully, sir,” she says, palm pressing into her forehead.  

“I expect a full report from you, Agent Scully. In writing,” says Skinner sternly. She wants to protest that it wasn't even a case, not officially, that Mulder just did something stupid and she had to track him down and pick up the pieces. As usual.

After hanging up with Skinner, she is in no mood to go to the hospital and check on Mulder. She orders a pizza and manages two whole slices, lies in bed and watches rerun after rerun of _I Love Lucy_ to clear her head.

She goes to the hospital in the morning simply because it is unavoidable. The nurses tell her that he is fine, that the ketamine is out of his system and the wound on his head is healing fine, that the seizures have stopped and so has his irrational behavior. They wave her on back and she tries to ignore the worry knotting in her stomach. The uncertainty.

Mulder is sitting up in bed while the TV plays quietly in the background. He looks up when she enters and she sees the shame spreading over his face before he looks away, quickly. “Hey, Scully,” he mumbles.

She's torn between hugging him and hitting him, so she settles for a neutral (if not slightly hard), “Hey, Mulder,” as she goes to sit in the chair beside his bed. He won't look at her; he picks at the hem of his blanket, brow furrowing. He's embarrassed. She's hurt. “What do you remember?” she tries. Maybe conversationally, maybe confrontational--she's not entirely sure.

“I don't… I don't know.” He rubs his face in distress. “I remember my mom and Samantha and… the smoking man… but I can't give any context to it all. Now that it's all stopped.”

“No,” she says, her hands fisting in the material of her coat. “I mean, what do you remember from the past few days.”

“Oh.” He swallows, staring at the blanket. A laugh track plays in the background. “I… I remember everything.”

She looks down at her hands curling in the dark material of the coat, at the pale, freckled backs of them. Remembers how they'd held Mulder not even two days ago, how she'd held his hand and wouldn't let anyone else touch him. _He didn't know what he was doing,_ she reminds herself. _He wasn't in his right mind. He wasn't…_

“And how do you feel about… about everything that's happened?” she asks her hands.

“Are you kidding me?” His voice is sharp in the empty hospital room. “I feel like fucking shit, Scully.” He's still not looking at her but his shoulders are rigid, his hands clutching the blanket in the same way hers are clutching her coat. She thinks about taking his hand. She thinks about confronting him about the emotional roller coaster this past week has been.

She clears her throat instead, running her thumb over her fingernails. They're gnawed practically to the quick; when did that happen? “Are they discharging you today?” she asks.

“Yeah,” says Mulder bitterly. “Apparently I'm not a danger anymore. Any charges against me are cleared; I guess I should thank you for that.”

She gulps, squirming in her chair. She can't tell if he's madder at her or himself. “I'm planning on driving on back today,” she says. “Do you… do you want to…”

“My car’s still up here,” Mulder says. “I need to drive it back.”

“Oh.” She's caught a loose thread between her fingers; she pulls at it, frustrated. “Yes. Well… I should head on back, I guess.” She doesn't know why she's saying this. She's never left him alone in the hospital, not once, before now, but. She can't stay here and awkwardly talk to him. She can't do this. She is a coward and she is running.

She looks up at him and he doesn't look back at her. “Get well soon, Mulder,” she says softly, hating herself for sounding like a Hallmark card. “Drive safe. I'll see you at work.”

Scully drives home in a daze, listening to talk shows on the radio until the voices blur into a motionless rhythm. She doesn't go home right away; she goes to her mother's house. “Dana,” her mother says with surprise when she opens the door, like she wasn't expecting her. Of course she wasn't expecting her. “What a lovely surprise.”

Scully hugs her mother tightly and lets the weekend fall away in her warm embrace. She is not dead yet.


	2. Chapter 2

She goes back to work the next day. Mulder isn't there, and she can't entirely say that she's surprised. She types up the report to send to Skinner and buries herself in paperwork for the rest of the day, slouched in his desk chair. Her eyes steal over to the phone more than once, considering calling to check on him. She doesn't call, and neither does he.

The next day, Friday, Mulder's back at work. Scully is startled when she sees him, jolting in the doorway and stopping suddenly, hand clenched around the doorknob. Mulder looks up from the desk. “Something wrong, Scully?”

“No, I--” She stops, scuffing her fingernails over the doorknob. “No, I'm fine. I'm glad you're feeling better, Mulder.”

He offers her an awkward, overly wide smile when she sits down. And that's when she realizes: Mulder is trying to make up for everything that's happened.

His efforts become more obvious during the day. He takes on the tasks that they both usually hate, doesn't introduce a new case all day, and offers to go pick up lunch at that deli she likes. (She fights him on the work thing, but accepts the lunch offer.) It's a fairly quiet day in that Mulder doesn't pick any fights--serious or non-serious case-related fights. He earnestly tries to make small talk with her over the screen of his laptop. She smiles smally when he can't see a few times. They don't talk about what happened in the attic in Quonochontaug.

At 4:45, she starts to pack up her briefcase. “Got any big plans this weekend?” Mulder asks mildly, pretending he's enthralled in the line of pencils he's pushing together on the desk.

She grins a little to the files she's sliding into the case. “Yes, actually. My mother is hosting a dinner party tomorrow night.”

“Oh,” he says, and she can sense the disappointment in his voice. She grins a little wider; he is very, very obvious and she doesn't even mind. She's missed him, somewhere in her subconscious. She's missed _this,_ them.

“Free and clear on Sunday though,” she says casually. “If you're around.”

“I'd like that,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice.

She scoops up the briefcase and turns to face him. “See you later, Mulder.”

“See you later, Scully.”

\---

Saturday brings in her big brother and her mother's priest and a call from Mulder to run off to Canada. He sounds sincere when he apologizes for interrupting her dinner, but her irritation rises as he keeps talking, as Bill keeps looking on furiously. “I just need you to meet me over at the Smithsonian,” he says, and she asks when, and he tells her _right away_. Bill turns and walks away, disapproval all over his face. Scully sighs heavily, something in her disappointed but something else in her unable to say no. “I'm on my way.”

\---

The man Mulder wanted to meet with, Arlinsky, weaves a bullshit tale of an alien body in the ice that Mulder buys completely. Scully stands in the corner and says nothing. She can't believe Mulder pulled her away from her dinner party for this. She can't help but be a little hurt that he went looking for leads this weekend, after he acted like he wanted to spend time with her. To his credit, she should've expected this. Mulder probably had sincere intentions in mind, but he can't resist leads like this. She's seen it again and again, saw it just last weekend, even if he clearly regrets what happened with her. Maybe she should've told him how much worse she's doing, maybe he'd understand then.

“You think it's foolish?” he asks as they walk through the stairwell, her ahead of him.

“I have no opinion, actually,” she says, putting on her coat.

“You have no opinion?” he asks incredulously.

“This is your holy grail, Mulder. Not mine,” she replies pointedly.

“What's that supposed to mean?” He sounds slightly hurt. He's stopped on the stairs behind her; she stops, too, and turns to look at him.

“It just means proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish,” she says, and the subtext is not at all subtle. He's standing two steps above her, and their usual height difference is a wide margin but this is ridiculous; she's about eye level with his stomach.

“What about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?” he retorts, and she sighs and looks away. “This is not some selfish pet project of mine, Scully,” Mulder says, and she wonders if he's trying to let her know that this is not a repeat of last weekend. Or maybe if he's just trying to convince himself. “I'm as skeptical of that man as you are, but proof... definitive proof of sentient beings sharing the same time and existence with us, that would change everything. Every truth we live my would be shaken to the ground. There's no greater revelation imaginable, no greater scientific discovery.”

“You already believe, Mulder. What difference would it make? I mean, what would proof change for you?” She really wants to know. She doesn't have any reason to keep searching, it won't change what little life she has left. She wants to go to dinner parties with her family and spend time with her best friend on the weekend. Proving the existence of extraterrestrials is pretty low on her list of goals. And she just, she just. She just wants to understand why it's so high on Mulder's.

He says some things about lies and proof and the existence of God--and she _can_ understand that, because she is staring the probability of God and an afterlife right in the face, and she thinks she can at least understand why her mother invited Father McCue to dinner. But it doesn't change her answer. She saw her oncologist after work on Thursday; she doesn't have long. “I can't go with you, Mulder,” she says, and almost tells him why.

“Can you at least take a look at those core samples? Tell me if they're a lie? That's all I'm asking.”

She can do that.

\---

She studies the ice core, looking for evidence. The lab tech offers to do further testing, and she agrees to come back later and meet him. She goes to meet Bill and her mother for lunch, finishes up some paperwork at the office. A wreck backs up the traffic on her way back to the lab; by the time she reaches her destination, she's twenty minutes late.

A man she doesn't recognize is in the mostly empty lab, at the computer. “Excuse me, I'm looking for Dr. Vitagliano,” she says politely. The man doesn't say anything. “Dr. Vitagliano, is he here?” she prods.  

“No, I'm afraid not,” the man says dismissively.  

“I'm supposed to meet him here,” says Scully. “Actually, I'm a little late.”

“Sorry,” the man says hurriedly. Blowing her off. He turns to leave, taking the tube that the ice core samples were in with him. She watches dubiously but lets him go; maybe he works for Vitagliano. She moves further into the lab and see the refrigerator open, the other tubes shifted in place and one lying on its side. She jogs to the door, looks up and down the hall and sees the door to the stairwell closing. Behind that door, she finds an empty stairwell, another door. She rattles the doorknob of the other door and finds it locked.

The door suddenly flies open, catching her in the side and shoving her backwards into the opposite wall through pure momentum. Dazed, she scrambles to her feet and towards the strange man. They struggle for a moment and all of a sudden she's falling, tumbling down the stairs and landing hard on the concrete floor. The door at the top of the stairs slams shut behind the man.

They send an ambulance when she calls for help; they find her still lying in the place where she landed because she couldn't find the motivation to move. Everything hurts. They ask about her emergency contact, which is Mulder, and she tells them not to call him. She has no idea where he is. “Call my mother,” she says. “The number's listed.”

They check her out at the hospital and lecture her about taking it easy, about taking time off of work. When she takes off her blouse to trade it for a hospital gown, she finds blood dotting the back.

Her brother shows up with a shirt and an apologetic look. “What are you doing here?” she asks, feeling strangely defensive. She loves Bill, is very glad to see him, but he's played such a small part in her adult life. He didn't even come to see her when she was in the hospital after her abduction because he was discharged somewhere overseas. She isn't used to Bill looming in doorways disapprovingly.

“I picked up the phone when you called Mom's. They said you could use a change of clothes,” Bill says, passing her the shirt.

“Thank you,” Scully says, taking it. “Um… where's Mom?”

“I didn't tell Mom what happened,” he says. She says nothing, continuing to button her shirt. She looks away. “So, what did happen?” Bill prompts.

“I was, uh… knocked down a flight of stairs.” She shrugs, still looking at the ground. “But I'm okay, luckily.” She shrugs a little again, looking up at Bill.

“You're not okay, Dana,” says Bill, and it's too much like what she always, _always_ hears from Mulder. She looks at the ground. She sighs, slow, and looks at him again. He's giving her the sympathetic look she's gotten so used to seeing. “I know about your cancer.”

“I told Mom not to tell you,” she mumbles, avoiding eye contact.

“Why?” Bill urges.

She sighs again, looking at the wall, the ceiling, and him again. This is too hard. “Because it's very personal,” she says out loud. _Because I didn't want to pull you away from your work. Because I haven't seen you since Missy’s funeral and I didn't know if you'd come. You didn't come the last time I was dying._ He's looking at her with hurt, with disappointment. “Because I don't want sympathy,” she adds.

“You think you can cure yourself,” says Bill, shaking his head in disapproval, and he is still stepping into the role of their father, he still thinks he's in charge. It still drives her crazy. “Mom tells me that you've gotten worse, that your cancer's gone into your bloodstream. What are you doing at work, getting knocked down, beaten up? What are you trying to prove? That you're gonna go out fighting?”

“Oh, now come on, Bill,” she protests immediately, because what he's saying is too much like what she's been telling herself these past few weeks.

He steps closer, anger visible on his face. “Do you know what Mom is going through?” he demands, and it hurts worse than falling down those stairs, worse than the headaches that have become almost constant now. “Why do you think I didn't tell her when they called?”

“What _should_ I be doing?” she demands right back.

“We have a responsibility! Not just to ourselves, but to the people in our lives!”

“Hey, look,” she protests, “just because I haven't bared my soul to you, or to Father McCue, or to God, it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me!”

“To what? To who? This guy, Mulder?” She wants to flinch but she won't let herself. “Well, where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this?”

He still looks furious. She just stares at him. She stares until it's too hard to look, and then she turns away. “Thank you for coming,” she murmurs, scooping up the clothes and turning to leave.

“Dana…” Bill tries, from somewhere behind him. The door smacks shut behind her.

(She'd like to tell herself that she doesn't need anyone. She'd like to be strong enough to say that she wants people to go about their everyday lives, that she wants Mulder to be Mulder and treat her the way he always has. But Mulder is infuriatingly Mulder, and his quest takes precedence over most else as usual, and she can't take it anymore. She needs the parts of Mulder who is strong and sympathetic and there to hold her hand, but those parts come with the whole, the ditching and the disappearing and the constant danger to himself, and she can't admit that she needs him anymore than she could admit that she doesn't. Maybe that's the reason she's still holding on.)

Scully changes in the bathroom. When she comes out, Bill is gone. She'd like to say she's grateful, but she isn't that either.

\---

A tech at the FBI helps her track down her attacker, one Michael Kritschgau. She tracks him down in a parking garage, starts to arrest him. “If you arrest me, they'll kill me,” Kritschgau protests as she frisks him.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she snaps.

“The same people who are trying to kill you. The people who gave you your cancer,” he says, and she starts to listen.

The story he tells is too real, too accurate. He gets every detail right: her abduction, the death of Missy and Mulder's father, the black oil, her cancer… Every single thing matches. A string of deception, lies meant to guide Mulder in the opposite direction. Aliens aren't real. She'd like to say she always knew, but all she can think of is how Mulder will react. How horrified he'll be, how crushed. How he'll refuse to believe it.

They meet Mulder at his apartment, tell him everything, and he doesn't believe them. Of course he doesn't. Kritschgau tells him that the body will be gone and he gets up and walks out.

Scully just stands there for a minute, leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed. Then she turns and heads for the door. “You should go ahead and leave, Mr. Kritschgau,” she says.

Kritschgau stands and walks to the door. “And where will you go?”

“With Mulder,” she says. _To prove him wrong one last time._ But she feels no joy in this. She doesn't know if she ever has.

Mulder barely acknowledges her when she catches up to him. Just unlocks his car and says harshly, “I'm surprised you want to waste your time like this, Scully.”

She bites her lip hard. “It's not a waste of my time, Mulder,” she says, balling her hands in her pockets. “I'm doing this for you.”

He opens the door roughly. “If you were doing anything for me,” he says, voice like sandpaper, “than you wouldn't believe a word that man says.”

Scully digs her fingernails into the cotton of her pocket, says, “You wanted the truth, Mulder. Well, I'm trying to deliver.”

He stares away from her, eyes hard, jaw clenched, and nods once before getting in the car. She rounds the front of the car and gets in the other side. They don't talk on the way to the warehouse.

They find what she expected at the warehouse--nothing. “Dr. Arlinsky?” Mulder calls, approaching the empty autopsy slab and shuffling through the ice and layers of plastic urgently. “It's gone,” he says.

Scully walks past him, surveying the room. She finds a body, says, “Mulder.”

Mulder walks over to join her and groans when he sees the body, blue scrubs stained with red over his heart, unseeing eyes, kneeling beside it. “What?” she asks, concerned.

“It's Arlinsky,” Mulder says grimly. “He's dead.” He closes his eyes briefly before standing up.

Scully notices another body in a tub of water, eyes shut under water tinged red, says, “So is this man.” Mulder walks over to look and immediately winces at the sight. “Who did this, Mulder?” she asks, and he turns and walks away. “Mulder?” she calls.

“What we had here was proof, Scully,” says Mulder, his voice thick. “There's no way it could be anything else.”

“You said it yourself, Mulder--more tests needed to be run.”

He stops and turns back to look at her. “Yeah, but the ice core samples checked out. If the ice hasn't been tampered with, how could the body within be a fake?”

“Cellular material found in the ice core samples were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described. Hybrid cells, chimeras within the matrix.”

“Do we know for sure that those cells are not extraterrestrial?” he asks, frustrated.

“Mulder, everything this man described--you can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any argument against them.”

“Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them,” says Mulder stubbornly.

“Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe,” she says, weary.

He's hurt, she can see it all over his face. He says fiercely, “After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's _not_ true.”

“Because it's easier to believe the lie, isn't it?” she says coldly.

“What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story?” Mulder demands.

She inhales. “He said the men behind this hoax, behind these lies, gave me this disease to make you believe.”

He's silent. He doesn't say anything in return. The hurt on his face is subtle and audible all at once. All the fight has gone out of him. He turns and walks away, and she doesn't call out to him. She doesn't move. In Kritschgau’s mouth, those words sounded like a confirmation. In her mouth, they sound like an accusation. Out of anyone else's mouth, it might’ve been. Out of Bill’s, out of her mother's  Out of Scully's mouth, it is just a plea. _Stop, Mulder. Please. Listen to me._ But she didn't mean to break him. She never wanted that.

She doesn't run after him. She wouldn't know what to say. How to apologize. She calls a cab, rattles off her location, and finally goes outside to wait, shoes clicking against the pavement. When she gets outside, Mulder is gone.

She doesn't know where to go, but she knows she doesn't want to go home. She goes to her mother's instead. It's late, and her mother answers the door in a bathrobe. “Dana, honey,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

“Did I wake you up?” Her nose is burning; she sniffles and wraps her coat tighter around her. It's too cold, even in May.

“No, I've been awake. Bill's asleep--you know him, he can sleep through anything.” Her mother laughs, too lightly. She's trying to stay positive. Scully sniffles again and wipes her eyes. “Dana, sweetie?” Her mother touches her arm. “What's wrong?”

Scully swallows hard against the lump in her throat. “I'm really sorry, Mom,” she says, and her voice breaks.

“Oh, honey.” Her mother pulls her inside to embrace her. Scully hugs her mother tightly, leans into her and lets herself cry.

They end up on the couch. Her mother brushes hair off of her face when she apologizes again, wipes her cheeks and says, “Dana, this is hard on everyone. But I know you. You're doing the best you can.” Her voice is trembling like she might cry, too, but her smile is sincere.

Scully takes a deep breath, leaning into the back of the couch. “Mom,” she says uncertainly. “If I told you… that the reason I'm ill is because of the work I do with Mulder… would you blame him?”

Her mother's face morphs, uncertain, and she smooths her hair again and again. “Do you?” she says quietly.

Scully remembers Mulder's guilt at her abduction, her cross pooling in the palm of her hand and his voice, gentle, when he assured her it didn't matter if she didn't remember anything. She remembers his reassurance after Melissa’s death, the way he'd given her space to grieve, the way he'd carried himself like he was blaming himself. She remembers him holding her in the hospital, telling her they'd find the men who'd done this to her. She remembers his guilt, soaking everything like a rainfall, after that night in Quonochontaug. She remembers his face, just an hour ago in the warehouse.

“No,” she says, and means it. “No, I don't.”

\---

She goes home later, weary in the implications of the evening and the sharp pains in her bones. She checks for voice mails and finds none, goes into her bedroom and starts to take her shirt off before Mulder's voice cuts through the room and scares her half to death: “Keep going, FBI woman.”

She jumps, turning to find him sitting behind her. “Mulder? What are you doing? Why are you sitting in my bedroom in the dark?”

“It was too crowded in my apartment, I couldn't sleep,” he says.

“I'm not kidding, Mulder.”

“Good, ‘cause neither am I. There's a dead man on the floor of my apartment,” he says, crossing the room to her window. “It's only a matter of time before he starts to stink the place up.”

“What are you talking about, Mulder? What's going on?”

He shuts the blinds on the window with a whoosh. “Apparently somebody thinks my life is interesting enough to put on videotape,” he says, turning on a lamp and coming over to her. “My apartment's been under an electronic surveillance for at least 2 months. Look at this. Courtesy of the US government.” He shows her the ID card of a Scott Ostelhoff, Department of Defense.

“That's the dead man in your apartment?” she asks.

“Yeah. He works…” Mulder pauses, continues, “He _worked_ for the Department of Defense.”

“How did he die, Mulder?” she asks warily.

“Gunshot wound to the face.”

Incredulously, she asks, “Have you contacted anyone at the Bureau?”

“I can't do that, Scully. I can't go to the authorities with this,” he replies, frustrated.

“What are you talking about?”

“This man, Ostelhoff, worked for the military,” he says. “Are you beginning to get the picture? Do you see what's happening here?”

“That the hoax is connected to the military, just like Kritschgau said it was.”

“This hoax, your cancer, everything! It just doesn't lead back to the military, it leads right back to the FBI.”

Shocked, she says, “ _What_?” in disbelief.

“I have proof, Scully. Come with me, I'll show you.” He motions for her to follow and she does, into the dark dining room. Mulder flips on the light, saying, “This man, Ostelhoff, was set up in the apartment directly above mine.” He sets papers down on the table as Scully sits. “I caught him trying to destroy phone records on which the same number was called 17 times.”

She takes the small paper in her hand, scanning it. “This is the PBX operator at the Bureau,” she says, recognizing.

“Yeah,” he mutters, stepping away from the table.

“Who'd he be calling at the FBI?” she wants to know.

“I don't know.”

“Mulder, how long has this been going on?”

“Maybe since the beginning, since you joined me on the X-Files.”

“That would mean that for 4 years we've been nothing more than pawns in a game, that it was a lie from the beginning.” Mulder says nothing. “Mulder, these men…” she says, nearly laughing from the insaneness of it all. “You give them your faith and you're supposed to trust them with your life.”

“There are those who can be trusted,” he says, crouching beside her. “What I need to know is who among them is not. I will _not_ allow this treason to prosper, not if they've done this to you.”

“Mulder, we can't go to the Bureau making these accusations.”

“No. But as they lie to us, we can lie to them. A lie to find the truth.”

She looks down at him, sincere and determined with a plan already running through his head. She knows him, and he won't give up. “What do you have in mind?”

He touches her hand but doesn’t make a move to take it, looks up at her seriously. “That body in my apartment, Scully… they won’t know it’s me. It’s unidentifiable. If you tell them that it is me, they’ll think I’m dead, that I committed suicide. And that’ll give me time.”

It sounds insane. She swallows hard. “Time to do what?”

“To break into the Department of Defense. I have Ostelhoff’s card, I can get in. It’ll work.” He’s so earnest, so eager, and it makes her want to put her arms around him. “I can find the people who did this to you, and I can take them down.”

She turns her hand up under his so that they’re matching palms, but makes no move to take it. “Mulder, that’s noble of you,” she says finally, “but I can’t let you…”

“It’s the only way, Scully,” he says empathetically, hand pressing into hers. “We’ll never be able to get those people otherwise. And I owe it to you, to your family… this is something that can’t wait.”

She swallows hard. “You’ll go to prison.”

“Only if I get caught,” he says. His palm is warm, the lines of it more familiar than she ever would've guessed. “And even if I do, it’s a small price to pay.”

She meets his eyes, dark and swollen with emotion. She swallows again. “Mulder, I can’t ask you to do that for me,” she whispers.

“You’re not,” he says firmly. “I’m asking you to do something for me.”

She looks down at their hands, pressed together. “All right,” she whispers, looking back at him. “I’ll do it.”

His face flushes slightly, the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. They don’t say anything.

She breaks the silence, standing. “It’s late, and you should get some sleep before you go. I’ll make up the couch.”

She turns to go into the living room and his hand curls around hers. “I'm sorry, Scully,” he mumbles. His fingers are calloused and too familiar, his thumb rubbing circles on the lines of her palm. She shivers. “I'm so sorry.”

She doesn't pull away. “For what, Mulder?” she murmurs, turning back to face him. He's standing now, close enough that she can feel all of his body heat.

“For… everything, God. For-for what I said to you after the case at the bowling alley. For Rhode Island, for almost… almost shooting…” He falters, his free hand coming up to her cheek. She inhales sharply as he tucks a strand of hair behind her cheek. “God, Scully, and you're sick because of me,” he croaks sharply.

“That's not…” She gulps and pulls her hand out of his. “That's not what I… Mulder, I didn't mean it like that.”

His eyes are dark; he looks to be on the verge of tears. “It's the truth, though,” he mumbles. “Out of all of the things I'm uncertain about right now, Scully, that is one thing I'm completely confident about. It's my fault you're…” He swallows off the word (dying) and throws in a half-hearted, “Sick,” instead.

She swallows. She can't stand it when he does this. “It's not.”

“It is.” He's nodding.

She crosses her arms tightly over her chest. “It's _not,_ ” she hisses through her teeth. She doesn’t know why that makes her so angry, but it does. It is not his goddamn fault and it makes her furious that he thinks it is. “You don't get to be the martyr of the fucking world, Mulder.”

He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and she can see the hurt flash across his face. “I'm not…”

“You drill goddamn holes in your head for your sister, almost get yourself killed. Almost get _me_ killed.” She scrubs the air with her hands furiously. The words spill out of her mouth, unthinking, every bitter thing she’s thought over the past two weeks. It's an avalanche and she can't stop it. “And now you're, what, you're going to fake your own death to go looking for a cure for me? It's _insane,_ Mulder, you'll go to prison if you're caught. You're risking everything, and for what? Am I just another cause to add to your list? Something else you can torture and almost kill yourself over?” She regrets it as soon as she says it, she knows that's not the case, he said it a few minutes ago.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them, tears are sliding down his face. “Fuck you, Scully,” he mumbles. “You know it's not like that. You _know…_ ”

“Do I, Mulder?” she snaps. She can still remember how much it all hurt: the accusations of her working against him, the gun pointed at her and his furious nodding when she asked if he was going to shoot her. “Let's just look at the past few weeks. Let's look at everything that's happened. You accused me of working against you, yo-you ran off to Rhode Island and almost got yourself killed…”

“You're right!” he nearly shouts. “I did! You're right! I almost killed you, Scully, and I hate myself for it. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No!” she hisses. “That's not at all what I want to hear, Mulder.”

“Well, what the hell do you want?” He motions wildly, jaw clenched hard, cheeks wet. “Do you want me to give up? Do you want me to just sit by and let you get worse? Do you want me to do nothing when I can do something? Is that what you want?”

“ _No_ , Mulder. I want…” She swallows hard. Tomorrow, she’ll be telling people he committed suicide. Murder-suicide, she’d thought to herself again and again in that attic. It’s one of her worst fears, losing him. “I don't know what I want. I don't… I don't want you to blame yourself for things you didn't have any control over. I want you to stop blaming yourself for things that _aren't your fault,_ Mulder. I don't want you to pile up all this-this pent-up guilt until it makes you crumble. I don't want you to run off to Rhode Island and almost get yourself killed just because we had a fight.” She swallows hard, eyes burning.

“That wasn't the reason,” he whispers.

Her teeth are clenched so hard her jaw hurts. “And then you run off to Canada because you can't face the fact that you almost shot me…” she says, voice too harsh in her own throat.

“I almost _killed_ you, Scully,” he says, and his eyes are closed again. His voice is shaking, tears still rolling down his face. “You're dying because of me, and I almost killed you, and it's _too hard_ , Scully. It's too fucking hard to watch you die.”

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know what to say.

“I don't… I don't do well with grief,” he mumbles. “It's no excuse, but I don't. I don't want to think about the fact that you're dying, Scully.” He swallows, scraping a hand over his face. “I shouldn't have…  I shouldn't have said those things I said to you at the Spuller case, I shouldn't have called you in Rhode Island…”

“Yes, you should have,” she says, and every part of her body hurts. He doesn't understand, he still doesn't understand. “You should have called me. God, Mulder, you would've _died…_ ”

“You're… dying,” he says like it hurts. “Because of me. It's my fault.”

“No, it's _not_ ,” she says. “I shouldn't have said _that,_ Mulder, I didn't mean it… I didn't know how else to get through to you. I didn't know how to make you understand. You'd kill yourself for this cause, and I wanted you to understand… Mulder, I have to go tell people that you killed yourself tomorrow, and I can't… I'm worried you're… not going to be okay. After I die.” Her face is wet, and he flinches at her words. She wraps her arms around herself. “Mulder, I've watched you destroy yourself… the only reason I stayed in that attic last week is because I was afraid of what would happen to you. You can't… I don't want you to follow me.” She gulps back a sob, sniffles a little. Mulder is staring at her, eyes wide and wet. “I don't want you to blame yourself. I don't want you to ruin yourself, Mulder. I want you to be okay.”

They're still standing too close; she closes the distance between them and wraps her arms around him tightly. He holds her tentatively, one hand coming up to cup the back of her head. _This is it,_ she thinks. She doesn't know what’ll happen tomorrow, this might be the last time she sees him. This might be the last chance she has to say everything that needs to be said. Her fingernails dig hard into his shoulders. “Promise me, Mulder,” she mumbles into his shirt. “Promise me you won't do something stupid when this is all over. Please.”

He's stroking her hair a little, motion gentle as if he's afraid she'll break. “I don't know what I'd do without you,” he whispers, voice trembling. “Scully…”

“You'll keep going,” she says. “You're strong, I know you are. You'll keep going because you have to. You need to find your sister, and I know you will. You'll find the truth, Mulder.”

“Scully,” he whispers brokenly.

“You'll be okay.” She sniffs, hugging him tighter. “I need you to be okay. I need you to promise me.”

He takes a shaky breath, pressing his nose into her hair. “I promise,” he mumbles.

She presses her cheek into his chest, holds him the way she did in the Quonochontaug attic. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “Mulder, I'm…”

“I know,” he mumbles to her scalp. “I am, too.” They hold each other tightly in the dim yellow of her dining room.

She thinks, for a split second, about kissing him, but ultimately decides against it. She can't do that to him and leave. And besides, they're both tired and overemotional. They're not in their right minds.

Mulder presses a lengthy kiss to the top of her head and she hugs him hard one time before pulling back. “Tomorrow's gonna be a long day,” she murmurs, reaching up and pushing hair off of his face. His eyes slip closed under her touch. “We should get some rest.”

He swallows. His hand is still on the back of her head. “Yeah, okay.”

“I'll make up the couch.” Her fingers brush over his forehead before she turns away.

She makes up the couch and he crawls in under the blankets. She's unable to leave for a few minutes, overwhelmed with the urge to crawl in beside him. “Goodnight, Mulder,” she says finally.

“Good night, Scully.” He catches at her hand, gently, as she passes and squeezes her fingers. “It's going to be okay,” he says softly, determined. “You're not going to die.”

“Mulder…” she tries. She thinks about telling him that her cancer has metastasized.

“There's a cure out there somewhere,” he says firmly. “And I'm going to find it. I am not going to let this happen to you.” He squeezes her hand hard. “I promise you that.”

She looks down at him sadly, smiles a little. “Good night, Mulder,” she says again softly.

He leans down close to her hand, his nose brushing over her knuckles, his breath tickling her palm for a second before he lets go. “Good night, Scully.”


End file.
